Here is a man who believes in conservative principles but who, for the sake of being elected, abandoned much of what he knew to be right.

He wanted to destroy the idea of conservatives as boogeyman, the image that left of center aggressors have been propagating since at least the 1960s. (Ronald Reagan alludes to this deception in his famous 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing.")

Harper became a centrist, an incrementalist.

What good did that do him?

As Dennis Prager says, "Truth is not a left-wing value. This does not mean that all who are on the left are liars or all who are on the right are truth tellers, it simply means that the left values other things over Truth. The left values equality, the left values feeling good."

The left did not care about the good or the moderate things that Stephen Harper did, nor did they care for the truth when the Conservatives experienced some minor missteps, like the Mike Duffy "scandal."

The Left is not your friend. The Left hates conservatives, and the Left is coming for you moderates, too. Hate is a powerful thing.

Comments

Nice try Jack but you full well know the so called right have moved well to the centre and the left has just moved further left. The once centrist Liberal party is now left of Hilary Clinton. What is nutty is: swarming Canada with potential terrorists, tearing down our military, and enriching union shop daycare providers at the expense of other Canadians. What is more nutty is putting out the old boss (Cretien) with the new boss, same as the old boss (Trudeau.)

Precisely Andrew. If this system protects us from the candidate of the low information or socialist voter, I am happy to have it. But besides that I believe in representative and responsible government, which is what a parliamentary and republican system both seek to create – not democracy, which produces the tyranny of the majority. So from an ideological point of view I firmly reject proportional representation. Pure democracies like that we see in Denmark, Israel, ect are pure disasters. Governments change constantly and there is very little stability. These PR systems are a laughing stock. A true conservative government is by implication a responsible government . One that doesn’t look to hand out favours that cost somebody else, but looks far into the future to make policy not to appease flag burning masses, but the rational and silent voters.

Let me summarize: You don’t like proportional representation, because the majority will vote left, and thus we must instead pick a system that allows the Conservatives to form government despite not attaining majority support ?

More than anything else, Ronald Reagan’s intellectual and moral validity comes from the fact that he was a man who at one time bought into the lefty/liberal ideology and through maturity and wisdom arrived at the understanding he clearly displays in this great speech.
It’s amazing how pertinent the problems created by the lefty Marxists in the 1960’s USA are to Canada’s problems today.
Johnson’s so-called ‘Great Society’ is still wreaking as much havoc today as it did in it’s inception.
Trudeau’s so-called ‘Just Society’ is still wreaking as much havoc today as it did in it’s inception.
Trudeau The Lesser is going to seal our fate and finish the ‘job’ his apparent father started…